… by J. R. Practix

Chisel

And for those of you under the age of twenty-five, I’m not talking about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. This was a real guy who was a painter, a sculptor and just an overall talented human being.

One of his famous works is called “David.” It’s a statue of the King of Israel when he was a younger man–totally naked, with a non-porn-sized penis.

I believe it’s made of granite. Whatever it was made of, it started out as a piece of rock, and from that rock Mike (shall we call him?) chiseled a human being.

Now, I realize that God’s pretty special because He made people out of the dust of the Earth. I’m taking nothing away from the Creator for such magnificent use of common material. But for God’s sake–Mike made a human out of rock.

So one day, I was staying at someone’s house and they had a chisel, and one of those hammers which is used to strike it. I went out and found a rock. It was not granite, but after a couple of whacks I was able to dislodge a piece of stone from its sedimentary mindset. What was left behind was jagged, coarse and ugly. The statue of David, on the other hand, is smooth, glistening and skin-like.

It just made me stand back and gasp in wonder.

Even though it’s popular nowadays to chronicle the evil perpetrated by the human race so as to plump up ratings and give people who own two suits and three ties a chance to go on television and talk about their opinions, I would like to stop for one second and admire, with great joy, a human being who could take a chisel and a hammer and pull a human likeness from a hunk of rock.